


We Can Do It!

by Nemhaine42



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), Thor (Movies)
Genre: Drunkenness, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-07
Updated: 2014-10-07
Packaged: 2018-02-20 07:17:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,346
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2419892
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nemhaine42/pseuds/Nemhaine42
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It was just a dumbass photo that was not supposed to have gone anywhere near the internet.</p>
            </blockquote>





	We Can Do It!

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Fuckyeahdarcylewis's October challenge: Women in History.

It was just a dumbass photo that was not supposed to have gone anywhere near the internet.

 

Steve had come back to the tower after a solid week in Eastern Europe, he was tired and dirty and in sore need of some down time. He was even considering himself lucky; Natasha still had work to do in Kiev, Clint was in Afghanistan and Tony never seemed to stay in one place for longer than a couple of days, taking Thor with him. The team was stretched thin, so Steve could be forgiven for not realising it was Halloween. There had been talk of a party before all the various ops had come up but, given that most of the invitees were now on duty, Steve had figured it wouldn’t go ahead. Wrong.

 

The elevator doors parted to reveal the common room looking like a frat party had rolled through it. Every available surface seemed to be littered with beer bottles, soda cans, and empty chip bags. He looked towards the TV just as the screen showed some poor, terrified horse careening off the edge of a ferry and getting shredded in the propeller blades just below. High-pitched, raucous laughter burst up from the sofa, and Steve peered over the back to discover the culprits.

 

“Fun night, ladies?”

 

Pepper, Darcy and Jane all shot up from their prone positions on the couch, half entangled with each other, “STEEEEEEEVE!!! You’re back!” they hollered.

 

Wow.

 

Steve had seen plenty of drunk women before but… Pepper? Not only were there flushed faces to go with the sea of empty bottles, but all three were dolled up for trick or treating. Hopefully, they hadn’t actually done that. Whatever they had done involved a lot of alcohol and junk food, and had begun several hours ago. It was now 2.30 in the morning and well beyond bedtime for these three. Steve was faced with a choice: try and herd them all to their individual beds, or go upstairs and not touch any of this with a fifty foot pole. The latter was tempting, but also came with a side-dish of guilt if something happened to them. He took a deep breath.

 

“I’m guessing, since you all live in this building, that there’s no designated driver?” he asked.

 

Pepper and Jane turned to point and laugh at Darcy, who raised her hand, “Yo.”

 

Now that he stopped to look at Darcy properly, he saw she looked a lot more sober than the other two. She was also dressed in blue work overalls, with her hair rolled up in a red bandana and in a style very familiar to him.

 

“Oh, hey, you’re uh…” he said, grinning and gesturing to her hair, “like the poster?”

 

Darcy smiled and flexed one arm in response. Unlike the poster, she still had on her glasses but, hey, a gal’s gotta see. It really didn’t spoil the effect any; Darcy looked fantastic. The sense of nostalgia was making Steve a little sad he’d missed the party.

 

Pepper snorted into a laugh and looked back and forth between the two of them, “You guys match.”

 

True enough, with Darcy’s costume and Steve still in uniform, they made a perfect duo of 1940s’ war propaganda.

 

“Take a picture!” said Pepper, already reaching for her phone.

 

“And kiss!” added Jane.

 

Darcy offered an apologetic wince before climbing over the back of the couch to stand next to him, “Sorry kids, it’s time for bed. Captain’s orders.”

 

Jane and Pepper groaned dramatically in protest, still insisting they have their picture taken. And insisting that they kiss.

 

“Don’t make me get the mistletoe,” Jane slurred.

 

“It’s Halloween, not Christmas,” Darcy said.

 

“Halloween mistletoe, then. We could make it out of real toes!” Jane exclaimed, “I’ll get arrested for making mistletoe out of toes just because you won’t kiss Captain America.”

 

“Maybe Steve doesn’t want to kiss me.”

 

“Well now, I didn’t say that,” he teased, perhaps against better judgement as it only encouraged Jane, who began calling Darcy ‘chicken for life.’

 

“Ok, fine.” Darcy huffed. She stuffed her hands in her pockets and raised herself up on her tiptoes to kiss his cheek. Or would have, except Steve turned his head slightly and her kiss ended up on the side of his mouth. He felt a jolt run through him and was very tempted to pull her back to him. Jane and Pepper cheered while Darcy blushed heavily.

 

“Darcy likes Stee-eeeve!” Jane sang.

 

Darcy rolled her eyes and leaned closer to whisper, “Can you help me get Pepper upstairs? Foster I can manage, but there’s more leg on Potts than I’m used to.”

 

Steve nodded, smiling reassuringly. Pepper, however, wasn’t ready to go.

 

“You guys did it too fast! My picture’s all blurry! Hold still and do it again,” she said, determinedly holding her phone at arm’s length.

 

Steve sighed and tried for his best ‘Captain’s voice’, “Fine. One more photo, then we’re calling it a night.”

 

Jane and Pepper gave wobbly mock salutes, while Darcy put one hand on her hip and pouted, “Oh, they listen to you.”

 

Darcy refused, pink-cheeked, to kiss him again. Steve would have gladly repeated the experience but Darcy seemed greatly embarrassed and he thought that admission would be best kept for another day; their audience was drunk, but not deaf. They posed for Pepper’s less than steady camera, this time with Darcy adopting the classic ‘We Can Do It!’ flex and Steve giving his best USO salute.

 

Then they bundled Jane and Pepper up and herded them off to bed. Darcy was much faster, being more experienced in coercing Jane, even with Jane’s insistence of gathering up all her stuffed, yellow ‘minions.’ No mad scientist was worth their salt without a few minions, apparently. The next ten minutes of Steve’s life were, as Darcy had predicted, spent directing Pepper’s legs into a vaguely upright position. Something made all the more difficult by Pepper’s tattered and ‘blood-stained’ dress.  He didn’t want to think about how she’d have gotten up the stairs by herself. He was followed the whole way by Dummy carrying Pepper’s shoes; someone had painted yellow and black roundels on the robot’s side.

 

“He’s a crash test Dummy, see?” Pepper giggled.

 

When Pepper was tucked - gracelessly and still dressed -  into bed, Steve headed back down to the common room to help Darcy clean up. She handed him a trash bag while she hunted down all the empties.

 

“So, Miss Sobriety, you draw the short straw or something?” he asked.

 

“Nah, I brought this on myself,” she replied, “Pepper wanted movie night and Jane would only come if I promised to stay sober enough to check her satellite-linked electromagnetic whatchamacallit all night. Something to do with solar flares and the aurora, I don’t even know.”

 

Steve thought that was a pretty crappy deal but Darcy beat him to it, “I regret many things, Steve.”

 

He laughed softly and tried to get on with cleaning. But his eyes kept wandering back to Darcy’s hair in those familiar rolls, the red lipstick and her waist in the tight shirt. He wished she’d dress like that all the time.

 

“I know it’s not all that fashionable, but you suit your hair like that,” he said, “Not that you’re old-fashioned, or anything! I mean…”

 

“I got you, Steve. Thanks,” she offered, smiling. She set the box of bottles down with a clink and moved on to righting the sofa cushions, “My great-aunt Connie worked in a munitions factory during the war. She used to have a Rosie the Riveter poster and told me it was her.”

 

“She lived in your neck of the woods too, you know,” Darcy continued, “She said she once went on a date with Bucky Barnes. He took her to a science convention.”

 

Steve tried to keep his face neutral, especially if she actually was the Connie he was thinking of.

 

“She was a cool lady, but she told tall tales, so I don’t know if I believe that,” Darcy said, finally switching off the TV, making the room thick with silence. She turned to face him, smiling warmly and trying hard to keep eye contact but her gaze kept sinking to his mouth. He wanted to say something, wanted to tell her it was totally fine if she wanted to kiss him again, kiss him properly. She stepped closer and reached her hand out to him… only to take the trash bag out of his hand. The romantic bubble in his head popped, and he remembered that he was surrounded by garbage and had yet to change out of the sweat-stained uniform he’d been wearing for three days.

 

“Thanks for your help, Steve,” she said, “I can take it from here.”

 

“You sure? I don’t mind…”

 

“It’s fine. You go wash-up, catch some Z’s.”

 

He’d be lying if he said all the recent missions weren’t catching up to him and, since the filthy and exhausted look probably wasn’t doing him any favours, he bid Darcy goodnight, looking back several times before he left the room. He took it as a positive that she didn’t look away until he was out of sight.

 

He found Bruce in the elevator, heading upstairs with a mug of tea. Steve wondered if keeping odd hours was a prerequisite for living in the tower. Bruce kept glancing at him out of the corner of his eye until he pointed at his own mouth and said, “you’ve got red on you.”

 

Steve turned to look at the mirrored wall of the elevator and saw he still had an imprint of Darcy’s lipstick on the corner of his mouth, which he’d been wandering around with unawares. He hastily wiped it on the side of his hand with an awkward smile.

 

Bruce headed to his own floor with little else to say. Steve went to shower, Darcy would be stationed in the lab, and Jane and Pepper would feel pretty delicate the next morning.

 

That should have been the end of that.

 

But no.

 

The first time their photo reappeared was on the common room fridge a couple of days later. It had been heavily edited to replace the background with solid yellow, and he was sure all the grime that had been all over him had been brushed out. But it was okay. What was not okay was that it wasn’t simply the photo they’d taken printed straight off. It was a screenshot of Tony’s twitter feed, complete with hashtags, “#wecandoit #twiceatnightandagainthenextmorning #niceonecap.”

 

Tony had let that photo loose on the internet and before long it was everywhere. In magazines, on TV. He’d had to sign more than a few copies of it at public events. Sam even texted to say the Smithsonian was selling it as a poster, but he might have been making that one up. Several reporters had asked him who his lady friend was but Steve had no intention of giving out Darcy’s name without express permission, so he answered, “Last I checked, she was Rosie the Riveter.”

 

If it had just been him, he could have ignored it. But it was Darcy too and he doubted Tony had consulted her before publishing the photo. She was clearly still embarrassed by it, since she’d avoided him all week. He’d always ‘just miss her’, or she’d be ‘running late’ when she was actually hiding in a store room. He wanted to apologise, and hoped she wasn’t too humiliated to ever talk to him again.

 

He eventually ran into her in the communal kitchen, making a big pot of coffee for the lab. When she caught a glimpse of him, she looked like she’d been struck by lightning.

 

“Steve! I swear to God I didn’t leak that photo! It was not me, I promise!” she blurted out. Darcy was dressed normally now, with her hair down but she was wearing the same lipstick as she had on Halloween.

 

“I know, I know,” Steve said, holding his hands up placatingly.

 

“It’s Tony’s fault,” they said in unison and laughed.

 

Though the 40s’ style fashion and their nostalgia were gone, Steve still found himself gazing appreciatively at Darcy; her soft skin, shiny hair, the smile tugging at her lips.

 

“I’m sorry you had to deal with that, Steve,” she said, grabbing a stack of polystyrene cups, “if it’s any consolation, Jane doesn’t remember any of it.”

 

“It’s no problem, if you’re okay with it?”

 

“I got to plant a smacker on Captain America, who am I to complain?” she shrugged and turned to grab a plastic milk jug. It was on the top shelf and she was stretching to reach so Steve stepped over to take it for her.

 

“Any time,” he said with a grin, handing the jug over. The offer wasn’t lost on Darcy. She smiled cheekily and tilted back up onto her tiptoes. She stopped short of actually kissing him, peeking through half-lidded eyes to see what he’d do. Steve dipped his head down and met her kiss, cupping her cheek in his hand. Darcy wrapped her arms around him and pressed up close. None of that side-of-the-mouth stuff this time.

 

“Hey, Darcy? Do you need a hand with the coff- Okay!” Bruce cut himself short and tried to backpedal but it was no good. Darcy pulled away from him and started gathering up her stuff for the coffee run.

 

“It’s okay, Doc. I got it,” she said, heading for the door. She bit her lip, though her smile beamed through, “I’ll catch you later, Steve.”

 

Bruce gestured awkwardly to follow Darcy but not before, once more, pointing to his own mouth, “you have uh… you have red.”

 

Steve looked at his reflection in the toaster to see more of Darcy’s lipstick on him, this time perfectly aligned on his lips, and wiped it on the back of his hand. He figured happily, with Christmas getting closer, he’d be getting a lot of lipstick on him, what with all that mistletoe hanging around. Hopefully not made of toes.

 

 


End file.
